Autumn Obsession

  You know those people that are completely obsessed with fall?   I'm sure you know the type, or at least have encountered them spreading their pumpkin-loving memes across all social media. As soon as August 27th rolls around and there's a slight crisp to the air, it's all about sweater-weather, bonfires, hayrides, and apple cider. I've never been part of the "all things fall" cult, but my son seems to have drunk the pumpkin spice latte.

   This morning I made the mistake of announcing "September starts tomorrow."
   Within the next minute and a half, GD rattled off 18 autumn-related craft projects he wanted to do TODAY, asked me what I was going to be for Halloween six times (no need to discuss what he's going to be, he's been planning that since April), and asked me about raking leaves and picking pumpkins TODAY three times.  GE and I and were obligated right then and there to watch Curious George's Halloween Boofest, which was followed by singing and acting out all the songs from it, and then discussing at nauseum everyone's Halloween costumes.  In case you were wondering, GD is planning on being No Noggin from the before-mentioned Curious George special.  Since I'm sure that unless you have a child 6 or under you are unaware of who No Noggin is GD would be more that happy to tell you all about it.  Much to his dismay, the rest of the family has not decided on their Halloween costumes yet.  I finally got him to settle down a little bit by giving him a pumpkin coloring page, which he meticulously colored in and proudly hung on the wall.  

We then returned to non-stop chatter about pumpkins, bonfires, raking leaves, and his plan to re-make Curious George's Halloween Boofest, only it would be even better.  Later on this morning we had to go out pumpkin picking and then find and read every fall and Halloween book we own.
   Don't get me wrong, I love his enthusiasm.  I just don't know if I can keep up with it for the next 61 days.
   Yes, we have a countdown to Halloween.
   Mind you, this kid has never even been trick-or-treating.  I tried to take him trick-or-treating at Walmart last year and he was too shy (and the Walmart employees wouldn't give him candy because he was too shy to say trick-or-treat, which really struck my mom-nerve. I still wish I had written them a letter.)
   As part of our decorate-for-fall schedule, we had to work on our corn stalk...thing.  

I'm sure these things have a name, but I'm not aware of what it is.  We actually started this a couple mornings ago.  My engineer husband's response when he saw it was something like, "Oh."  When I asked him to be a little more impressed, he pointed out that it was made out of dead cornstalks.  And later discussed how the cornstalks would be better fed to our goats, which could then turn it into compost for us (yes, in this family evidently one way to measure the efficiency of a system is its ability to produce manure).   From what I've learned in 8+ years of being married to an engineer, he was basically telling me that this was an inefficient design.
   However, that did not stop him from helping to make the assembly of our cornstalk...thing...more efficient.

   After analyzing the physics of the best place to tie the twine, he got out a ratchet strap to help us tie it even tighter.  I should have had him join in the initial stages of the design because it ended up a little tippy.  But my son obviously loves it anyway.